Vetements Proves Inclusivity Is Insanely Cool With Its Latest Runway Show

Models—who needs them? Well, actually, fashion definitely needs models of all shapes, races, and gender identities in order to stay alive, but Vetements just proved that maybe they, at least the professional sort, aren't always mandatory for showing a new collection. In the brand's characteristically irreverent way, it showed its latest fall 2017 collection in Paris on (gasp) real people.

The "models" chosen to wear the French brand's unique streetwear designs ranged from tall young men with shaved heads to short elderly women and men with quintessential dad vibes. While there were "traditional" models scattered throughout the show, the majority of the people who walked the label's runway looked as if they were plucked straight from the street regardless of age, ethnicity, or body type. The brand teased the theme of the show with a video invitation on Instagram: a collection of people's driver's licenses.

Vetements founder and creative director Demna Gvasalia has a way with intersecting the worlds of high fashion with mass consumerism, having made his spring 2017 collection a celebration of collaborations with mass brands like Juicy Couture and Carhartt.

Showing this collection just days after the worldwide Women's March demonstrations, the inclusiveness and purposeful diversity of faces in the show sends the important message that fashion can no longer be an elitist industry. Fashion belongs to everyone. When a brand shows its clothes on an impossibly beautiful model, it is not necessarily representing the customer who is seeing the image. Hopefully, this move signals to the rest of the fashion community that customers don't have just one face and identity—they're multifaceted and complex but beautiful nonetheless. See some of our favorite looks from the show here, and see the face of inclusivity.